Tulane Green Wave baseball rolling into conference play

Outfielder Scott Powell and pitcher Jonathan Garrett are the only Tulane players who know what it's like to dogpile in celebration of making the College World Series -- even though they watched from the stands because they were redshirts in 2005 and not in uniform on that happy day.

The two seniors also know in order to get that experience firsthand before their careers are over, it's time for the Green Wave (15-9) to get moving, starting with this weekend's Conference USA opening series against Houston (7-16, 2-1).

"People ask me about getting back to Omaha all the time," Powell said. "And that's always our ultimate goal. That makes it important for us to set the tone this weekend. You get the first win, then the second win, and hopefully end it up right, and then you've got a good little run going and momentum that hopefully you can continue."

"These next 10 days are going to be very challenging for us," Tulane Coach Rick Jones said. "Houston has had a tremendous program throughout the history of Conference USA, Rice has been the best team in our league since they came into it, and LSU is having a great year.

"And by now we're usually pretty comfortable with our top 11 guys or so, and we haven't been consistent enough to be able to say that yet. Sometimes I feel like we're grasping at straws."

That almost sounds like a coach whose team is down and out. And with losses to Le Moyne, Wright State and Northwestern State, plus C-USA's RPI at a middling 11, Jones acknowledges it's probably going to take a top-three finish in the conference for Tulane to make the NCAA Tournament without having to rely on winning the league tournament to qualify.

But the Green Wave is in better shape than some might think. Their record was the same at this point in 2006 and that team went 28-12 thereafter, advancing to a NCAA regional.

This season, the team batting average of .302 is 13 points higher than last season, and the ERA of 3.64 is second-best in C-USA and an improvement over last year's 4.37.

And that's with Rod Segedin, last year's top hitter and closer, out of the lineup with a rib injury.

Several have taken up the slack. First baseman Sam Honeck, a .275 hitter last year, is at .414 with a league-leading 10 home runs. Shortstop Josh Price, a .236 hitter last year, is batting .382. Powell, a .230 career hitter, is hitting .314.

Freshman Jeremy Schaffer, who is hitting .342, and previously seldom-used Steve Moritz, who has ably replaced Segedin at third and is batting .318, are also helping.

The weekend pitching rotation of Conrad Flynn, Matt Petiton and Josh Zeid has been stable, and several players have been effective in relief.

The Wave is also on a season-best four-game winning streak, bouncing back from last week's disheartening losses to Southeastern Louisiana with a sweep of Northern Colorado and Tuesday's 15-2 rout of Nicholls State.

"Those losses to Southeastern were tough to swallow, but they sort of woke us up," Powell said. "Since then we've swung the bats, played great defense and pitched well. We've just got to keep doing that."

Houston's record is tied for the worst in C-USA, but the Cougars have played an extremely strong schedule and have come to life of late, winning two of three against Alabama-Birmingham last weekend and defeating Louisiana-Lafayette 6-4 on Tuesday.

"Just because they've got a bad record doesn't mean they're not a good team," Garrett said. "We've never had a lot of success against them (2-8 since '05) and they always seem to get it going when conference begins.

"You can only take them one at a time, and this is who we've got up next. We can't worry about anything else."

Ted Lewis can be contacted at tlewis@timespicayune.com or 504-232-5071.